Babbling about books and plants.

Story-Scribbling Sunday – January 8, 2012

I lost 13 days to Christmas and New Year. I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t write for a week before Christmas – I can’t have been that busy. OK, maybe because Theresa and Sophie were going to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, and even though this was only going to be a short scene (mostly to introduce Sophie’s brother and his girlfriend), I decided I couldn’t write it unless I watched them again myself, and spent three days watching and grumbling to myself about all the changes they made to the story. (I haven’t read the books in years, so I don’t remember everything too clearly, but I’m still mad about what they did to Faramir.)

For a couple of days after Christmas, I was too busy devouring my new books, and then we were at the grandparents’ place, and company and stupid talkshows aren’t exactly conductive to writing.

The car rides to and from my aunts’ place, where we went for New Year, were good times to write, but while we were there, I couldn’t write again. Partly I didn’t even want to, because I was having a good time, and partly because I spent New Year’s Day with a killer headache (and I would still like to know why – I don’t even drink! Just because I stayed up until 7 AM my body doesn’t need to act up like that!)

But now I’m back home, I’m getting back into the habit. Plodding along slowly, often just 300 words a day, but progress is progress. I’ve made Theresa shut up for a bit and visited Julius’ and Annabell’s POVs again and arrested an important Kivailo priest/leader. Now I’m back with Theresa again, she is just easiest to write, but she and Sophie will have their first major fight. Muahaha!

A couple of silly conversations, since I have no noteworthy typos:

He fell quiet when Alex and Mona came back into the room. Alex cocked his head as he looked at them. “Have you been talking about us?” he asked into the sudden silence.

Sigrid leaned back to look at him. “No. About elephants.”

Everyone stared at her.

“Well, one elephant anyway. The elephant in the room.”

“Will you two stop whispering over there so we can start the movie?” Alex asked.

“Give me five seconds,” Sophie answered.

“What are you doing?” Theresa asked as Sophie fiddled with her phone

“I want to time how long those two –“ she gestured to her brother and Mona. “- can stay quiet before they have to start complaining.”

(I forgot to time how long it took me to start complaining, but it can’t have been more than five minutes.)

In non-“Goblins”-related news, I woke up with another story idea the other night.

I dreamed that what we think is imagination is actually a telepathic connection to someone else’s mind, so when we thin we have a stroke of inspiration, we’re actually just sensing what somebody else is thinking or feeling.

There are some gaping holes in that theory, of course, because what about fantasy worlds, science fiction, different time periods? But I guess it works if I just limit it to character interactions, personality traits and such that don’t depend on a certain setting. (Hm, maybe this dream was partly caused by some messed-up-family stuff I heard at the New Year’s party, which made me think, “I can’t believe I know people like this. This usually just happens in stories.”) I do sometimes get lines/conversations, scenes or images that just pop into my mind out of nowhere. Sometimes they fit into a story, sometimes they don’t.

In any case, I think I already declared this a story idea while I was still dreaming, and went on to a girl and a boy who figure out they’re sensing an actual person’s thoughts and fall in love without ever having seen each other.

I don’t really want another story stealing my attention before I finish “Goblins”, but I still started fleshing out these vague dream ideas into actual characters. Right now, we’re having a bit of an argument – They’re screaming, “We need names!” and I tell them, “No, you need to shut up and let me finish ‘Goblins’!”

Well, if characters are actually real people, that would explain why they so often refuse to do as they’re told!

It seems like a fun story to write, and I actually have a few scenes in my mind already, but I will not write it yet. I will finish “Goblins”, I will finish “Goblins”! Besides, I’m not even sure it is a good story for me. I’ve never done plain romance, and I don’t think I want to. I don’t even like to read it, why would I like writing it? But I can’t come up with any other plot, or even a way to add more plot that wouldn’t feel horribly contrived. (Considering this only happened two days ago, I’ve thought about it an awful lot!)

Well. Enough story-chatter now. Off to bed, and back to work tomorrow.